About this artwork

The men represented in this painting are professors in the Department of Surgery and Molecular Oncology at Ninewells Hospital and Medical School in Dundee. The Head of Department and Professor of Surgery, Sir Alfred Cuschieri, is in the centre. Sir David Lane, Professor of Molecular Oncology is on the right. On the left is surgeon Professor Steele. All three men appear to have been disturbed in the middle of their duties: Professor Steele has blood on his hands and Sir Alfred Cuschieri is holding a medical implement. The luminous quality of the paint makes the figures look almost ghostly, expressing the sense of horror and anxiety associated with cancer.

Commissioning a portrait can be an uncertain business, with the match between artist and sitter often producing unpredictable results. But when curators at the Portrait Gallery approached Ken Currie about a painting of three eminent specialists in the field of cancer research, their choice of artist was an inspired one. Currie was one of the great talents among the so-called ‘New Glasgow Boys’ who dominated Scottish art in the 1980s. Steeped in the study of the old masters, Currie’s work has ranged from fright­ening crowd scenes to quieter images of individual human bodies, alive and dead.

He has been described as a reluctant por­traitist and, although his previous work involved figurative themes, he had never before accepted a formal portrait commis­sion. Realising that he would not be able to paint three such busy men together, nor even have them pose for long periods, Currie made life masks of their faces to assist him with his work. However, the resulting picture goes beyond traditional notions of the portrait as a likeness and is instead an allegory of the epic quest to conquer cancer, the most widely feared of all human maladies. Currie’s painting shows three modern-day heroes, battling on our behalf on the front line between life and death.

When this portrait was conceived, the three subjects were leading innovators in cancer research at the University of Dundee and its affiliated teaching hospital, Ninewells. At the centre of the painting is Sir Alfred Cuschieri, the Maltese-born pioneer of keyhole surgery. To his left is Professor Robert Steele, renowned for his research into colorectal cancer. These two surgeons are wearing scrubs; their surgical masks are dropped to reveal their faces and the gloves on their raised hands are still blood-stained from their work in theatre. At the right, in the white coat, is Sir David Lane, best known for his role in the identification of p53, the cancer-suppressing gene that is now known as ‘the guardian of the genome’.

Any medical group portrait is bound to invite comparison with the best-known precedent in art history, Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, 1632 (Mauritshuis, The Hague). Currie has adopted some of the Dutch master’s dramatic devices, including the strong lighting, the prominent hand gestures and a composition that suggests that, as spectators, we are interrupting a moment of intense concentration. But Currie’s picture is thoroughly modern and uncom­promising in its conception. The design is stark and simple, with the three figures shown in a cool, bluish light against a dark background. Sir Alfred holds a med­ical instrument with a tiny light whose meagre illumination serves to emphasise the wall of blackness behind.

The artist spent many hours in theatre observing his subjects at work. He recalled how Sir David had told him that people often imagine cancer as a ‘dark thing’ and that it was their job ‘to go in there and retrieve people from this darkness’. A curtain is drawn back and the three men seem poised to enter the pitch black beyond. The play between light and dark, reason and fear is skilfully handled by the artist; these three great men command our respect, albeit with a shudder of anxiety.

This text was originally published in 100 Masterpieces: National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2015.

Related exhibition

The Modern Portrait

Ken Currie

Ken Currie

Scottish artist Currie studied at the Glasgow School of Art. He used industrial Glasgow as the subject of his early work, with paintings that were linear in style and modelled in block-like forms. In the early 1990s, Currie was much affected by political and humanitarian events in Eastern Europe. He…